Japan and the Japanese

538 JAPAN. A. D. 18171854.
This, added to the fact that the harbor is a bad one, will make it
appear evident that the Japanese commissioners got
the better of
us in the treaty,
as far as this is
place concerned.
"The surrounding country (wherever nature will permit it) ia
highly cultivated. The valley of the creek is broad and well tilled,
yielding rice, millet, Egyptian corn and maize.* The ears produced
by the last are very small, being not more than from two to four
inches in
length. Sweet potatoes and the egg-plant
are also raised
in great abundance. There are no horses about Sinioda, and bul-
locks are made to supply their places. Provisions, with the exception
of eggs and vegetables, cannot be obtained here. The shark
and banito arc the only large fish found in the harbor. Small fish
are plentiful, and they seem to form almost the only article of food
of the inhabitants, besides rice."
The following description of the houses at Sinioda, by Mr. S.
Wells Williams, will serve to illustrate the descriptions of Japanese
houses already given from Kiimpfer and Thunberg, and will show
how little, as to that matter, Japan has altered since their time :
" The houses in Simoda are built merely of pine boards, or of
plaster thickly spread over a wattled wall of laths, the interstices
of which are filled in with mud. In some eases these modes of
construction are combined the front and rear being of boards, or
sliding panels, and the sides of mud. When thoroughly dried,
the mud is whitewashed, and the plain surface worked into round
ridges, three inches high, crossing each other diagonally from
the roof to the ground; the ridges are then washed blue, and give
the exterior a checker-board look, which, though is
singular, more
lively than a blue mud wall. The plaster is excellent, and these
walls appear very solid and rather pretty when new; at a distance
one would even think them to be stone; but after a few years the
ridges loosen, the rain insinuates itself beneath the outer coating,
and the whole begins to scale and crack off, disclosing
the mud and
rushes, and then the tenement soon falls to pieces. Still the progress
of decay is not so rapid as one would think, judging only by
the nature of the materials, and the walls are well protected by
the projecting eaves. No bricks are used in building, nor are
* This, probably, is one of the Portuguese legacies to Japan.